Saturday, 17 October 2009

After a couple of episodes of fun, frolics and fan services, episode three of To Aru Kagaku no Railgun promised to get straight down to business, as we see a girl from Tokiwadai school attacked in an empty street by another girl. But who is this mysterious person? And why are they consecutively attacking students of Tokiwadai?

Meanwhile, Saten and Uihara get to pay a visit to the Gardens of Education to hang out with Mikoto and Kuroko, and after a mishap with a puddle on Saten's part leaves her needing a change of clothes, she ends up wandering around town in a Tokiwadai uniform. The rest probably writes itself... needless to say, her "new look" leaves her as the next victim of this mystery assailant. So just what deviant acts is this person carrying out on her unconscious victims? Well, put it this way, my first assumption was that she was a member of the Tsumugi Kotobuki fan club...

Anyhow, the rest of the episode is of course concerned with catching that attacker, and of course revealing the reason for their vendetta - This is hardly stuff of the magnitude of To Aru Majutsu no Index's action-packed story arcs, preferring to take a far more gentle and less menacing, evil route, but you know what? I loved it. Aside from the fact that this is really starting to consistently look like the most sumptuously animated series I've seen this season, it's just outright fun, pure and simple. With a bunch of likeable characters with a decent dynamic between them and a story that kept moving at just the right pace (however frivolous it may have been), this episode proved to be a perfectly enjoyable romp... and to be honest, I'm not sure I can ask any more of a series like this.